Wednesday, November 09, 2005

In case you were interested, the winners of the 2005 TV-DVD Award have been announced. The award recognizes the best releases of TV shows on DVD in the past year. Studios submitted their top DVD titles for consideration in the 15 TV-DVD categories. The titles were then rated by expert judges, and their ratings were tallied. The top three TV-DVD titles in each category were then listed on an online ballot and voted upon by consumers on the Home Media Retailing website. After much calculation and deliberation, the winners were announced and the awards were presented (by Donny Osmond) at the 3rd Annual TV-DVD Conference held in Marina del Rey this week.

"The Muppet Show – Season 1" won for "Best Children’s Series" (although many Muppet fans will argue the show is not just a children’s show). Disney/Buena Vista is delighted by the honor (of which “The Muppet Show” was their only win out of the 15 categories this year). I am told that a “Season 2” set is in the works, however no solid information on the release is available yet (I’ll keep you posted as soon as I hear anything).

Also, Henson fan’s will be happy to hear that Lions Gate’s release of "Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars" on DVD won in the "Best Miniseries/Made-for-TV Movie" category. I'm sure everyone at Lions Gate and Henson are pleased with their award as well.

Congratulations to all of the 2005 TV-DVD winners! And thanks to all the fans of the set who voted for the DVD, and the producers who made these great DVD products a reality.

6 comments:

Harry B
said...

Thats just great. Hopefully this will wake up the Disney bigwigs to how strong the Henson products are, and they will release other series as well on DVD. I still hold out hope to be able to introduce my daughter to the joy of The Dinosaurs series that aired in the early 80's. Why this classic is still on the shelves is beyond me.

Yeah, Dinosaurs should be out on DVD too. I don't know why it hasn't been released yet. (By the way Harry B, It was the early 90's not the '80's). From wha't I've heard Greg say here on the blog, "The Muppet" Show Season 2-5 and "Muppets Tonight" dvd box sets are on Disney's radar for future releases down the line. I hope Muppet Babies, Dinosaurs, Jim Henson Hour, and the countless Muppet TV specials get on Disney's DVD radar too.

Concerning Dinosaurs...i THINK this may be under Henson's ownership still (it was a co-production of Disney/Henson, but as i understand, Henson still owns the rights)

With Henson trying to reestablish its non-Muppet brands after the sale, i would think Dinosaurs would be on the shortlist of season box sets...they probably wanted to start off with Fraggle Rock since they can do more with the brand if it takes off...wheras it would be hard to do future Dinosaurs projects since it has a very definitive "ending"...

..still i know there would be a huge audience for it, not just from a Henson fan perspective or tv lovers pov, but also with the current state of affiars in US politics and a growing and continually more energized/outraged progressive movement, Dinosaurs stands out as one of the greatest progressive-values tv shows...they could do not just the usual promotion but they could advertise a dvd release on Air America, see if they could get it offered as a Buzzflash.com premium etc

"Dinosaurs" is part owned by Henson and Buena-Vista. Buena-Vista (Disney) are the ones with the power to release the existing episodes on DVD. "Dinosaurs" was created, distributed, and owned by both Henson & Buena-Vista. Henson owns the characters, and whatnot, but the distribution and production are under Buena-Vista's label (similar to how Disney/Buena-Vista had partial ownership and distribution control of MCC and MTI even tough Henson owned the Muppets). It is not unreasonable to imagine Henson and Buena-Vista working to release the show on DVD (one side just has to initiate it, and as of now it looks like neither is overly interested in working with "Dinosaurs" on DVD yet). I’ve heard nothing about the possibility of re-releasing it on DVD, but I’ll let you know if I hear anything (maybe I’ll do some digging with Henson and Buena-Vista this weekend to see what’s up). I too wish this show would be re-released on DVD.

Regarding "The Jim Henson Hour" ownership; the Muppet segments are Disney owned. The Storyteller segments, and the mini-movies (Dog City, Living with Dinosaurs, Monster Maker, The Song of the Cloud Forest) are Henson owned. An uncut collection of all the episodes would be hard to pull-off without setting up a bunch of deals and unlikely agreements between Henson, HIT (who has distribution rights to certain segments), and Disney (and possibly Sesame Workshop if they want to include the Sesame episode). The Henson company split really sliced-up this show. However, with some reworking and editing, the Muppet material of the show could nicely fill a 2 disc set quite enjoyably. I’ve talked with Disney folks about this, and at this time they don’t have any plans for the show (which has little major recognition or public remembrance) - maybe after they exhaust the other Muppet TV shows on DVD, but not anytime soon (if ever).

Greg, do you think someday the Muppets will come back to the Henson Companey(it's very unlikely though? I like what Disney is doing, but I do want the Muppets back to Henson's. I just don't want them to end up like the Fleshier/Famous cartoons(mulipule companies most who don't care).

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